Connecting Base Stations over Metro Gigabit Ethernets

Emerging high-speed metropolitan Ethernets create new opportunities to save costs when converging data and telephony services. However, connecting GSM and UMTS base stations over metropolitan Ethernets require these networks to meet stringent QoS requirements in the presence of bursty data traffic. To investigate this problem, we have probed ETH’s campus network, which spans the metropolitan area of Zurich, for several weeks. From our results, we infer that lightly-loaded metropolitan Gigabit Ethernets with average utilizations below 1% presumably have a potential to carry traffic from GSM/UMTS base stations.